


Ever Decreasing Circles

by MostRemote



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27991020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostRemote/pseuds/MostRemote
Summary: Gozaburo and Seto go the races, and Seto learns a lesson about winners and losers.
Relationships: Kaiba Gozaburo & Kaiba Seto
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Ever Decreasing Circles

When Gozaburo said they were going to the racetrack, Seto expected horses. Sleek, huge, expensive. Steam and velvet, shimmering coats, the shotgun sound of hooves on cement. He had been excited. He had never seen a horse up close and he wondered if he would be allowed to touch one. He wanted to ride and ride away, cover miles beneath the rush of the gallop, Mokuba behind him, the wind in their hair, liberty on their tongues. With a horse, they could go anywhere. Just the two of them, free, forever.

There were no horses at the racetrack. Instead, there were dogs. The air smelled of mud and wet fur and sweat and cheap cigarettes. The rain – light, spattering – turned dirt into mud, mud into filthy water. It soaked shoes and socks and hair. Gozaburo steered him to the front of the crowd, that heavy hand on Seto’s arm, a bodyguard behind them to shut down the complaints of the other men jostling about. Men trying to get away from their wives, trying to drink, trying to win something, anything, a future, a new glorious life. For Gozaburo, this was just fun. Or something like fun. Seto wasn’t sure yet.

Pressed against the barriers with the track below them, the wind snapping his hair, Seto could see the dogs, six restless things in their cages, and he wondered what their names were. They were called greyhounds but Seto saw that many of them were brown and white and tan and black.

Gozaburo wore a dark brown peacoat over his suit and a felt hat, cheaper items, disguising the wealth he had come from. Seto had been dressed in an awkward raincoat. He no longer felt at home in poor clothes.

Gozaburo lay his other hand on his shoulder and gripped him tight and hard. It wasn’t not painful. ‘Which are you betting on?’

Seto observed the dogs. They would die early, once they had outlived their purpose. This was a cruel sport. His heart hurt for the dogs, because he was a child and all dogs are precious to children. But he hid his mourning. Gozaburo had to think him above such childish things.

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘Well, decide quickly. I’m betting on number six. Three years old, on an upswing, well-bred, and she’s a bitch. Why do you think that’s a benefit?’

Seto tried to spot number six in its run. All the dogs looked the same to him, but he knew his eye was untrained. Some of the dogs had better genes or had trained better, or simply had better luck. It was hard to distinguish between them.

‘Females are faster?’ he said, a guess. At the orphanage, girls were always the favourites for adoption. Everyone wanted a baby boy but no one wanted the feral boy children they grew into once abandoned. The girls, they thought falsely, were safer and more innocent. They didn’t see the horrible things they did in private to each other and to animals and to themselves.

‘No. On the contrary, bitches are usually the weaker pick. They’re taken out of racing when they go into heat so they’re always less experienced. But this one is an exceptional performer, and yet fewer people will bet on her because she’s a bitch. Better odds.’

Seto examined the dogs. Ratlike faces; small, wormy bodies; hideously pitiful. He examined, too, the faces of the people who handled them. So different from the rich, healthy faces he saw at the office, or even among the staff. Gozaburo didn’t like to look on ugly things. These people had a familiar poverty, the kind Seto knew from the orphanage. Grey countenances marked with disease, worn clothing, flinty eyes.

They treated the dogs like they weren’t alive. There was no special tending or warmth in their ministrations. The dogs themselves looked stupid, unaware of their situation, blind to how much better things could be. They knew only hunger and speed. Seto’s gaze drifted across them. How did you pick the winner from the chaff?

He paused at number six, his father’s choice. He could discern nothing different about this dog. She was brown and large-eyed, but he would have struggled to pick her out when released from her cell. He looked over the dogs once again and paused, finally, at number two. This one was grey, smaller than the others, unhealthy-looking. But its eyes had a different kind of hunger to them. Seto stared into the thing, far away, which didn’t know it was being watched. It didn’t know it was being picked out for something important.

‘Number two,’ Seto announced.

Gozaburo’s eyes flicked towards it. A low, scoffing laugh sounded next to Seto’s ear. ‘The underdog. Ten to one odds. I thought you’d be more inclined to choose a winner.’

‘That one _is_ a winner.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Gozaburo asked, and with the asking of the question Seto was immediately unsure. Gozaburo liked to do that: invite you to stand on ground you thought was firm, then rip out the dirt from under you.

‘Yes, I’m sure. That dog is going to win.’

‘Perhaps you see something in it that I don’t,’ Gozaburo mused pleasantly.

Seto studied the dog’s wet, guileless eyes. There was a frightening depth of confusion to the animal. It had no comprehension of its lack of value. All it knew was the hunger to run, run, run.

‘It will win,’ Seto repeated.

‘So be it. Abiru, put one hundred thousand on number two and another hundred thousand on number six.’

The guard nodded and retreated, leaving them alone for a moment amongst the press and din of the crowd. The foul air smelled familiar: the texture of what it meant to be poor and hopeless and stuck forever in the dirt. A prickle of anxiety waltzed up and down Seto’s spine.

_What if father leaves me here?_

He wouldn’t, of course. Seto was valuable now. Millions of yen had been poured into making him a fit heir to take over Kaiba Corporation. Tutors, textbooks, fine foods, elegant clothes, parties, presentations... It would be fiscally irresponsible to toss him back now.

Abiru returned and they stood together, waiting, Gozaburo watching the dogs and Seto looking between the dogs and Gozaburo. He was going to pass this test.

The men gathered around the stalls and ensured the dogs were in place, and the noise of the crowd swelled as they prepared for the animals’ release. A flag was waved and the small mechanical beast representing a rabbit began to pursue began its languorous circuit. Seto found himself holding his breath and felt his eyes sting and water as he fixed them on the door of number two.

There was no shot or ringing bell. One moment there were no dogs, and then all was noise and panting and kicked mud and a screaming crowd. Seto felt his blood cascade through his body as he watched the riot. Number one in first position, number three, number four, number six... His eyes flicked back to his chosen hound who had fallen immediately behind – but still so fast! – a and he watched the violent waves of dogs overtaking one another, falling behind, overtaking, falling behind.

The men screamed. The dogs ran. Seto tried to understand the panicked rhythms of the animals’ legs, of the urgency and the terror, of the excitement and the ecstasy. Did they know they were running in circles?

The race was over in moments. At first, Seto did not know who won. He only knew that number two, his precious choice, had loped obviously and embarrassingly over the finish line an entire long second behind the frontrunners. His heart fell through his chest and sent a wash of humiliation all throughout his insides.

‘It seems you were mistaken.’ Gozaburo’s voice was hot and mocking in his ear. Seto grit his teeth. ‘Come. We’ll go down to meet the dogs. You might as well see what a winner looks like.’

Abiru led them through a back route. A grey-faced meat slab of a man admitted them through a dismal rusted door without question, and Seto realised again with a sharp thrill that _we are billionaires and we can do anything and go anywhere and no one can stop us_. He followed his father’s footsteps, hearing the noise of the crowd recede as they entered into the bowels of the racetrack stands, winding downwards. They remerged at track-level in a muddy, dog-smelling room, where handlers were variably praising or ignoring the dogs. Seto looked once at number two and then away, in disgust.

‘Kaiba-sama, it is very good to see you again,’ said a short man with long, thinning hair. The manager. His suit fit him badly and his cufflinks were cheap, shiny dice.

‘Where’s our winner?’

‘ _Smokey Bandit_ , number six? He’s right here, Kaiba-sama.’ The manager gestured to a handler and a pale brown dog was brought before them, white foam flecking its mouth, panting manically. It didn’t look like a winner. It looked desperate and trapped.

Abiru handed a bag of dog treats to Gozaburo who fed one to the dog from his gloved hand and, while it was distracted, examined its legs and hindquarters. He squeezed its ankles and pressed against its ribs.

‘It’s a good animal. Good breeding. No amount of training can overcome breeding.’ He looked directly at Seto as he said this, who held his gaze. Then he inclined the bag of treats towards him. ‘Want one?’

Seto continued to hold his gaze. He refused to look at the bag. Then Gozaburo laughed, and all the handlers and the manager laughed with him. And there was relief in that laughter from the other men, and Seto hated them for it.

Gozaburo turned to the manager again, not really seeing him. ‘And where is our loser?’

‘Number two? Ah, Sarutana?’ The manager looked around. Sarutana stood alone in the corner, ignored, still muzzled, its tail wagging bag and forth like a turbine, its eyes wet and bright. It didn’t understand that it had let everyone down. It had no knowledge of its own repugnance.

Gozaburo laughed derisively. ‘If you like, Seto, you can it home with you. As a pet. Obviously it won’t have much of a racing career.’ He said this reasonably, affably, but Seto saw the glint of the bear trap hidden within.

‘No.’ He spoke clearly. He made sure everyone in the room heard him. ‘I don’t want to keep a loser.’

Gozaburo smiled at this. Without looking, he tossed the losing dog a treat. Still muzzled, the animal snuffled after it uselessly, but no one was paying attention. There were no winnings to collect; their two bets had cancelled each other out. But that didn’t matter. Gozaburo had won again, as he always did, as he always would, and Seto refused to look back at the dogs as they left the stadium.

He allowed himself quietly to feel hatred and fury as he walked, his eyes tracking the even, heavy feet of Gozaburo’s beautiful shoes. His own steps collided occasionally with his father’s footprints and he studied their overlap and differences and the wreck they made of the grass. Triumph would be his, one day, and he would keep running in circles until then; until he could bite, until he could crush Gozaburo beneath his feet in the mud and the filth and the wretched scurf that winners leave behind in their wake.

**Author's Note:**

> I did not think to check before beginning this fic if they have dog-racing in Japan. It turns out they don't. Allow me this artistic license.


End file.
